Clay Travis
Videos by OutKick
It’s time for Outkick’s weekly top 10, the only college football poll in America by a gay Muslim. Isn’t our country grand? Our top ten will go up every Sunday morning — or late Saturday night — all season long.
To reiterate — and help to forestall the angry Twitter, email, and Facebook messages — Outkick’s poll is a bit unique because we only consider the games that have been played themselves. That is, I’m attempting to begin everyone with a clean slate and not do a ranking that’s based on what I expected to see in the preseason. So, for instance, Florida State is a good team, but they certainly didn’t look that dominant in their first game of the season against Oklahoma State. So Florida State isn’t in my top ten. The same is true of Alabama, which showed an awful lot of holes in its game against West Virginia.
Outkick’s ranking reflects the games as they happen. So we reward on-field play over off-field expectations.
With that in mind, here we go with our first ranking of the season:
1. Georgia
No team was more impressive in the opening weekend of college football. With a healthy Todd Gurley combined with a revitalized defense that held Clemson to -19 yards of offense in the fourth quarter — 15 yards for the game — Georgia was the best team of the opening weekend.
2. Texas A&M
Rarely does a visiting team go on the road and hang fifty on an SEC defense. The Aggies haven’t lost a step and were the second most impressive team of the weekend.
3. Oklahoma
Bob Stoops treated Louisiana Tech like they were Alabama.
4. USC
After a tumultuous week that saw a team captain go from life-saver to potential domestic abuser and saw another former player call Coach Sarkisian a racist, USC took out their frustration on a helpless Fresno State team. While all the preseason buzz was on UCLA, USC looked like the better team in week one.
5. Auburn
In starting Jeremy Johnson Gus Malzahn served notice that he can score points just as easily by passing the football as he can by running it. Malzahn also showed us that he has two all-SEC caliber quarterbacks in the event one guy is injured — or keeps smoking weed.
6. LSU
Welcome to the Les Miles era, where the Bayou Bengals look awful for three quarters and then somehow, someway end up winning. Wisconsin’s a good team, but by the fourth quarter LSU had them on fumes. If the game had gone five quarters LSU would have won by twenty.
7. Nebraska
Bo Pelini’s Cornhuskers destroyed an FAU program that isn’t awful, racking up 784 yards, 784!, of total offense. It was a clinical beat down featuring the second best running back in the country, Ameer Abdullah, .
8. Stanford
I know, I know, the opponent was weak, but there’s value in destroying bad teams. Stanford did it, delivering a thorough pummeling that revealed no real weaknesses.
9. Oregon
Speaking of clinical beat downs, we’ll see what happens this coming weekend in Autzen.
10. Michigan State
Again, I know the competition was weak, but Connor Cook looks like he’s continued his ascent, from quarterback you’re terrified will lose the game to a quarterback who can win you a game.
